Advice for a New Company?

Scott7217

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May 21, 2013
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If a new company wanted to start making smartphones, what advice would you give them?

The mobile market is very crowded. The Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One M8 just came out recently. The Moto G is doing well on the low-end. We are expecting successors to the Note 3, Moto X, and Nexus 5 later in the year. On top of that, Apple and Microsoft/Nokia will eventually come out with updates to their lineup. A new company would face fierce competition from every direction.

I would tell them to make a phone with stock Android so that they could minimize their software development costs. Don't waste your money on Android skins when stock Android is perfectly usable. Let Google do most of the heavy lifting. As long as you can update your phone relatively quickly once a new version of Android rolls out, you'll do a lot better than other companies who are months behind.

This would be just to start. A new company would need to do a lot more to succeed. So, what would be your advice?
 

someguy01234

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Good case of study is what the OnePlus crew is doing right now, head to their announcement section and see what they're doing: Announcements | OnePlus Forums

For the most part, they need a very large investor. OnePlus investor is the same company that helped Oppo to the mobile market scene.
 
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Scott7217

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Yeah they killed themselves with the invite only thing.

I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why OnePlus is using invites to sell their phone, at least in the beginning. A lot of people are saying that they should just take preorders.

Even if their servers crash on release day, wouldn't that actually be good publicity? OnePlus could say so many people want their phone that their ordering system went down.
 

flick0416

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Interesting question - good discussion-starter. To me, I'd put more focus on the software and overall user experience than hardware and looks. There's so little you can do with the design of a phone, I'd just make sure that the design of the phone didn't detract at all from the overall experience. I think the size would be between 5 and 5.5 inches - that seems to be the sweetspot now. Nothing earth-shattering with the design though. To me, you have more to lose than to gain by trying to do something out of the box with the design.

From there, I'd think about software features and things people would want to use, but more importantly, things people would benefit from. What are things that would be beneficial to users that they don't have to think about? A small example of this is the Battery Monitor app that I use. I only use it because it puts the numerical percentage of my remaining battery up in the status bar - it's perfect because it gives me what I want with zero effort, it blends in, and it's natural. That's kind of a simplistic example, but that's the principle I'm talking about. Add features that are helpful/beneficial, but that require little or no effort to get to.

I think a bigger way to make this a reality would be to embed features similar to Tasker into the OS. That's such a powerful tool. How often am I turning sound on/off when I go to certain places, or toggling WiFi on/off, or sending messages to people at routine times? Finding ways to automate routine tasks would be hugely beneficial, IMO. Obviously, there are ways to do this now, but they require app purchases/downloads. If I was building a phone, I'd try to build those features into the OS.

I also think the always listening feature in the Moto X is fantastic. Now, I don't own a Moto X, nor have used it, so I don't know how functional it is in reality, but it seems like a really practical and useful feature. I like the "OK Google" voice command on the Nexus 5, but I have to turn on the phone and get past the lock screen before I can use it. That's too much effort for something like that - if my hands are free enough to turn on the phone and enter my password to unlock the phone, then I'm probably in a place where I can get to what I need just as quickly/easily as using the voice command. It's a nice idea, but it's not totally practical, so I don't use it very often. Having the ability to send a text or start a phone call without having to touch the phone at all would be a huge benefit to me.

I can't think of anything else along those lines right now, but that's the mindset I'd try to adopt: useful features that require minimal effort to use.
 

Scott7217

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I can't think of anything else along those lines right now, but that's the mindset I'd try to adopt: useful features that require minimal effort to use.

I agree with your general premise on adding useful features, but I think it would be better to separate them (if possible) from the OS and just have them as apps in the Play Store. This would allow the features to be updated more frequently. Google is already using this method with the Google Keyboard and the Google Camera apps. Still, you present a good idea. Make your phone work for you instead of the other way around. I can get behind that. :)
 

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